News

Munson opened tonite talking about another great weekend, noting USC had to struggle a half with Arizona, UCLA’s shootout over Cal and a few others. Also, UGA played extremely well winning in Knoxville but lost two starters off the defense. We are now forced to play yet another night game at Vandy. UGA, UCLA and Texas Tech are the biggest surprises among the remaining unbeatens. A summary of upcoming games this week focuses on USC-Notre Dame and Florida-LSU.

Munson is sure CMR is pleased with the way we played. CMR: Losing Taylor and Anderson is not good. We do have other guys who can step in – Jarvis Jackson at MLB, which he prefers. Jarvis will play there now and DVW will start at WLB. Miller has had a fine season at SLB. Ellerbe will back up WLB, Washington backs up at MLB and either Olaolu or Jamario Smith backs up SLB.

CMR doesn’t mind playing at night, other than having to wait all night. Plus things are usually more calm regarding the weather and such.

Munson asked about Cutler. CMR says he is among the stat leaders in the SEC and will be a good challenge for our defense. Offensively, we need to run the ball well to set up play action.

Munson kept waiting for Tenn. to shift to all running but noted both teams were having trouble on the ground until our final drive. CMR says it's tough to run against great defenses. You have to stay balanced and use different looks. You can gear to stop someone’s running game. CMR again pointed out Auburn of two years ago. Tenn. had good success throwing the ball but threw a INT when they got close.

Flowers’ long return – everyone made a great block. The series before that, we were going to kick a long FG but Martinez talked us into punting and playing defense once we called timeout to think about it. Then we downed it on the one and got them 3 & out. When you punt from the end zone, you have to worry about protecting. That helped us set up the blocks.

They know this week is another conference game. Last year, we had some good leaders and guys who’d started a lot of games. There were 8. This year there are 18.

About the journey to be a champion .. Richt was thinking about what to talk to the team about it today. We’ve only just started this journey as we’ve only played 3 SEC games so far. It has to go one game at a time. We can’t even control each game, but only how we prepare. When emotion fades we have to rely on good habits developed through practice. CMR also reminded the team of what happened from the LSU to Tenn. game last year.

Clayton in Ila – admitted to being the “fake Pat Dye” from last week. CMR said he got us fired up. CMR: the first big test from a strong, athletic DL was Miss. St. We did not block as well as we had in that game. We challenged them with the Tenn. bunch, with a bunch of NFL types in the group. Running was not easy in the beginning but we got stronger. Calloway gave some good input at halftime as to the best kinds of running plays for the 2nd half.

Yoserian in Atlanta – very impressed with the defense. CMR said it's fun to watch our defense. The turnovers have been the big difference between this defense and those of years past.

Tim in Warner Robins complimented the whole team and asked CMR to wish his son Happy Birthday.

As for the interception – CMR said he called one too many out patterns. DJ threw the ball on time, their guy broke on it perfect. We came back with a pass right away, plus we weren’t going to just hammer it from our 9-yard line. Special teams – the last two TDs against UT were by us – Damien Gary (2001) and this one by Flowers.

Bobby in Columbia says it's good living in SC since we beat them. The first game we were wide open in play calling but seemed to go away from it vs. SC. We really mixed it up well this week understanding Tenn. has a tough defense. Did we just wear them down? CMR thinks so, but the score was making it tough on them with not much time left. CMR decided we were going to run it every down with 2 TEs and only change formations a bit so they couldn’t guess where we were running it and try to knock out a couple of first downs. CMR never expected we’d drive it in for a score. Calloway did a great job having a plan for that point in the game – milk the clock.

Caroline in Newnan thanked the players for making sitting in those itty bitty seats in the corner of the end zone worthwhile. Also, penalties killed Tenn. but we did great at staying clean. What did we do to clean it up? CMR first thanked her and the others for being there. We were making more noise than them during pre-game warm-ups. As for penalties, we just kept preaching and disciplining. This was either the second or third straight game our defense had no penalties.

Chan in Greenwood was also impressed with the defense, especially tackling .. few yards after initial contact. Also glad to see Milton and Browning get playing time. CMR said one thing we did during the open week was work on tackling, even though Munson doesn’t like us practicing it. You have to do it sometimes so everyone remembers what it feels like to tackle well. Milton and Browning are good players, deserve to play and we need to be purposeful about getting them in.

Brian in Waycross complimented everyone for jelling and playing as a team. CMR says this is really a team that understands no one is better than the group. They seem to enjoy this no-name identity. No one or few stand out but as a group they’re starting to make a name for themselves.

Frank in Augusta wondered why we don’t run sweeps to our left, behind the TEs. CMR says he used to love the toss sweep, but when you toss it vs. a fast defense, the LBs flow so fast. Now we run a stretch play, which can go outside but can also cut up. It goes downhill just enough that the LBs can’t flow so fast. CMR has learned to like that play; we could incorporate the sweep but no need for too many running plays. We like that and the inside zone.

Kevin in Valdosta said he’s often been critical of play calling but was very pleased with it against Tennessee. He asked about running slant patterns a couple of weeks, and also mentioned a couple of recruits. CMR noted MoMass caught the slant. We had two plays DJ could go to there – got in the shotgun, made a signal to get ready to snap then reacted to a defensive shift.

Jeremy in Memphis is glad we beat UT since he lives there. He likes us throwing out of the 2 TE set. He also noticed LSU blitzed extensively against Vandy and Cutler was only 11 of 32 or thereabout. Also, he also covered DL recruiting. CMR said we’re not a wholesale blitz team but pick our spots. He thinks you can live or die by the blitz, using LSU of recent years as an example. We force the QB to make more than a one-man progression. When you blitz and play single coverage the first read gets man coverage. Hopefully we can learn from what LSU did to Vandy though.

We’re always looking for big OL & DL that are hard to find, and sometimes also hard to keep healthy, citing several examples (Brock, Miller, Marcus Jackson).

A couple of callers just called to wish good luck.

Steve in Memphis was impressed with our reaction going over to shake hands with Jason Allen when he got hurt. Also, should we just take a delay of game penalty sometimes in order to save timeouts? In the first half, we take timeouts when we need them. We actually had enough time to run four plays as it turned out but could have run the ball if we had timeouts.

The first timeout was CMR’s fault – we had a play called from a certain personnel group but then CMR wanted to change the personnel group and stumbled around.

Brett in Adrian was impressed with how the team came out as a sign of unity. Brett said he had no doubt in the 3rd quarter we would win. Also, make sure the team does NOT watch ESPN Gameday. CMR says we don’t need to fall for anyone bragging on us. We were underrated, then we beat Boise St., now this. We have to practice well so we play well because of habits ingrained during the week.

Brooks joked it's getting too easy in Knoxville and was also impressed with how we walked out onto the field. Anyone else beaten them 3 straight there? Bama under Stallings did it; CMR knew that stat. In fact Bama beat them five straight in Neyland and we’re the only other ones to win as many as three straight.

CMR said in closing that if today is any indication, we will practice well this week and be ready on Saturday.